The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for defining an information flow communicated between application activities of an enterprise and supporting planning of an enterprise information system, and more particularly to a method for defining an enterprise information flow suitable for defining all information necessary to the activities of the enterprise by studying communicated information for all combinations of vertical items and horizontal items on a matrix representation having all application activities and external organizations arranged in rows and columns.
In order to cope with severe environment change and enterprise competition, the structuring of an information system which is directly coupled to a business strategy, that is, a strategic information system (SIS) has been demanded by many enterprises. As a result, a need to the information system is complex such as the realization of an information system which really contributes to the business and the structuring of an information system as a business base, and the information system itself has become of large scale and complex.
Consequently, it is necessary to provide information which is conformable throughout the enterprise. In the development of the information system, it is important to make clear an overall system of the information system which the enterprise should have and establish a master plan which is directed to an overall optimization without waste and difficulty. In order to cope with future rapid expansion of the enterprise information system, it is necessary to structure the overall system and clearly define mutual relationships of elements. Methods for defining the overall architecture of the enterprise information system in order to meet such requirements have been proposed. For example, in the IBM business systems planning (BSP) method described in "Strategic Structuring of Information System" NIKKEI McGraw Hills, 1985, application activities called business processes are defined on a vertical axis of a definition chart matrix and information flowing between the applications called data classes is arranged on a horizontal axis in order to define the enterprise information system architecture. For each element at a crosspoint of the vertical item and the horizontal item on the matrix, an identifier C (composition) which indicates whether the application activity composes the information and an identifier U (utilization) which indicates whether it utilizes the information are entered. In this manner, it is made clear which application activity composes the particular information, and which application activity utilizes the particular information. As a result, the communication of information among the enterprise application activities is clarified.
In a Japanese periodical NIKKEI COMPUTER Aug. 28, 1989, pages 63-79, especially pages 66-67, a method for analyzing an information flow among items is disclosed, in which line application activities and staff application activities are arranged on a horizontal axis in a diagrammatic representation, external organizations and business resources are arranged on a vertical axis, and those axes are divided into the line application activities and the staff application activities and into the external organizations and the business resources. In this method, any information flowing between the application activity and the external organization can be defined.
However, in the BSP technique of the prior art, no attention is paid to the definition of the information flow between the application activity and the external organization or an information flow of the activity across a plurality of line and staff resources. In the BSP matrix chart, no consideration is paid to a quick observation of the information flow for a desired application activity.
In the method described in NIKKEI COMPUTER Aug. 28, 1989, no consideration is paid to define the information flow for any combination of the application activities and the external organizations. Further, no definition is made as to which one of the activity/ organization items on the vertical axis and the horizontal axis of the chart is a source and which one is a user.